To Blurb or Not to Blurb

As an author I greatly value blurbs for my books. A “Blurb” is a short description of a book, a review written for promotional purposes. Blurbs from other authors are valuable, but they are even more valuable if those authors write in my genre or can be viewed as subject matter experts for some reason. So, when I wrote The Orion Assignment, a thriller set in Ireland with a native Irish protagonist, I thought the blurb I got from native Irishman and crime fiction author Ken Bruen carried a lot of weight for potential readers. Beyond saying that he liked my book, it sent the message that I got the Irish characters and setting right.

And what about the subject matter expert angle. If someone requests a blurb from me because their protagonist is ex-military, or African American, or a senior citizen, are they taking advantage of me? After all, they hope my endorsement will increase sales. And is my third-party endorsement a lazy way around doing their research? Don’t they have any ex-military, or black, or older friends of their own to show their manuscript to?

Well, just because they asked me doesn’t mean they haven’t already gotten other experts or members of those groups to read their book. But maybe my voice will carry more weight than theirs. Or maybe he trusts my feedback more than theirs.

That’s a lot of maybe. But I do feel a responsibility to repay the universe for all the blurbs big-name authors have written for me. And I feel a responsibility to help other writers I respect to get their seniors, ex-soldiers and African American characters right. But it’s still me doing a favor for another author, so in general my rule is simple. It’s something I do for writers who are respected friends.   

Make Your Protagonist Shine

Sometimes we at Intrigue Publishing receive a manuscript from an author who tells a great story, writes wonderful prose and has a fine touch for dialog, yet we have to reject the book. Despite all else being perfect, a weak protagonist will sink a novel.

To be clear, I’m not talking about a weak hero. In fiction, heroes often have astonishing abilities, although anyone who does good deeds for others can be a hero. The protagonist is always the subject of the story. It’s the person who the story is about. He or she is the person who grows the most, takes the big risks and makes the big sacrifices. If those things don’t happen your protagonist is a weak one, even if he’s Hercules or Superman.

The very center of every story is change, and that has to revolve around your protagonist. In some stories, especially science fiction, it is common for the protagonist to change his world. More commonly, it is the hero who changes, grows, matures or learns an important lesson. This is why you often hear that a hero needs to be flawed. Your protagonist should at least start out with serious flaws. In the best stories, the obstacles the hero overcomes during the story teach him to overcome those flaws.

Also, a good protagonist is not ALWAYS positive. Neither Indiana Jones nor James Bond is a cheerleader. They know the world is tough and they have to be tougher. Like all of us, your hero needs to have an off day once in awhile, and make the occasional stupid mistake. And when he makes those mistakes, he should learn something from them. That’s a lot of what leads to the growth. (It took Dorothy a lot of missteps to realize there’s no place like home.)

You should also make sure your hero’s personality is the result of his or her past experience. You need to know this person so well that you know exactly what caused him to be the way he is. And at an appropriate time you can share that with the reader to officer added insight.

And, since this is the focal character, your protagonist needs to be the person who drives the plot. This is the person who walks headlong into the greatest danger. Who takes the big risk, who makes the big decision. And ultimately, this is the person who undoes the villain. Gotham City has a huge police force, but it’s Batman’s story so it must always be Batman who ultimately defeats the Joker.

If you can do all this in your story, you can be sure your protagonist will shine!

Leave Your Novel's Past in the Past

When I teach my class on creating characters I stress that the author needs to know everything about the people he creates including their entire life history. But as I read submissions to Intrigue Publishing it occurs to me that I should put more emphasis on the fact that you need not share all you know with the reader.

The thing about backstory is, it isn’t always relevant to your current story. As a reader I want to story to keep moving forward. If you stop to explain too much history, it just slows things down.

There’s a reason we reject novels with what we consider too much backstory. In real life, people just don’t think about past events that often, unless they’re tied directly to something that’s happening to them right then.  If the writer is solidly in his or her point of view character’s head, they will know what past events are relevant to the moment.

No matter how fascinating it is to the writer, readers don’t really want to know all about the character’s past. Readers want to be surprised from time to time. They want to discover more about the character as the story unfolds. So it’s more fun to drop hints to the past. As a reader I like to be thinking, “why did she react so strongly to that? Why did he say that? Why did he laugh at THIS situation?”

My best advice to writers is to write the whole story without ANY backstory. Just ignore it and let the characters do what they do. They, when you go back to read through the manuscript for your first re-write look for places where the scene doesn’t make sense unless you give the reader more information. If they need that backstory to understand the scene, find a place to reveal it. If it doesn’t really help that scene, you can reveal it later so the reader gets a chance to say, “Ah! So THAT’S why…”

I think important backstory is defined by how it affects the character now. It’s not about recorded history. It’s about the impact of that experience. For example: My detective Hannibal Jones listens to a lot of Classic Rock. I show this to the reader and let another character ask about it later on. That gives Hannibal a reason to reveal that he grew up in Germany listening to the American Forces Network radio. He was a child when his father died, and he had clung to the mix of music AFN played in those days.

So put that backstory in the background and help your readers (and editors) enjoy your story more.

Deep Feedback from Beta Readers

My remarks in the last two posts explain how a writer can make the best of their early readers. But some of those readers may have even more to offer. You may have writers who work in your genre among your beta readers. Or perhaps readers who are self-declared experts in your genre because they consume almost every book published. If you have people like this, whose knowledge and judgement you trust, they may be eager to go deeper and offer more specific critique, generally looking at two sides off each writing issue. For example:

What characters did you best connect with?

What characters need to be better developed?

Which lines, or scenes, that you particularly liked.

Which bits did you dislike, and why?

As you read, what did you meet that confused you or wasn’t clear?

What should I have elaborated on more?

What section did you want to skip over?

Where in the book did you think it was a good place to put the book down?

One last point: If you follow this plan you may get a lot of valuable feedback. You will need to consider it all, but not reflexively accept it. If you get any recommendations that you just can’t agree with, ignore them. But if a comment is repeated by more than a couple people, seriously consider it.

After reviewing the suggestions it’s time to get down to serious rewriting. And be sure to thank those people whose input was most helpful.

Help Early Readers Help You

So-called beta readers can really help a writer see his work with fresh eyes. Did you say what you meant? Is the story as strong as you think it is? An outsider (or five) can help you improve your writing if they know what to do.

So don’t just give them your manuscript and ask for their opinion. “It’s great!” feels good, but it won’t help you find the flaws. The trick is to ask specific questions. I like to make it easy by starting with a list of yes / no questions. These tell me if I’m generally hitting the mark.

Did the story hold your interest from the beginning?

Could you relate to the hero / heroine?

Did you know whose story it was and where you were quickly enough?

Were all of these people believable?

Was there enough tension, suspense, and conflict to hold your interest? In other words, was it intriguing?

Did you find the ending both believable and satisfying?

After I get those responses, in writing, I ask my early readers if they’d be willing to give me some more detail. For those who are still interested I have a list of questions that ASSUME a negative answer. These make it harder to be nice.  For example, I COULD ask:

Was there a point where you began to lose interest about what would happen next?

But it’s too easy to just say no to that one. So I actually ask:

Where did you start to lose interest and become less excited about what would happen next?

That makes the reader really think about it.  Likewise, these questions:

What inconsistencies did you pick up – places, characters, time lines…

What confused you? Annoyed you? Frustrated you?

Which character’s dialog did NOT sound natural to you?

Where was there too much description? Or not enough?

What mistakes jumped out at you In terms of spelling, grammar or punctuation?

I actually have more in-depth questions for those early readers who are (or want to be) writers themselves. I’ll share some of them next time.

Prep Your Story for Early Readers

professional editor and proofreader are very valuable, they can’t see your work the way a fan or avid reader can. So I bite the bullet and send manuscripts to a few of them before the real editor gets hold of it.

I still cling to my self-editing ritual. You know, hide the manuscript for a week, then read through a printed out copy. Naturally I correct any typos, misspellings and grammatical errors I spot, but that’s the least of it. I also read to make sure my style is consistent, that the story flows and the characterizations are consistent. Because of the genres I write I also need to double-check the timelines and logistics. I’m also checking to make sure there’s some sort of conflict in every scene.

When the manuscript’s as good as I can get it on my own I share it with four or five first readers. I’ve heard them called beta readers but I’m not sure why, since they are the first, the “alpha” readers. Over the years I’ve learned that they can’t be relatives or loved ones. They can’t be objective, even if they want to be. They either want to encourage your dream (and so automatically praise you) or they want to save you from wasting your time trying to be an author (and so are hyper critical.) I’ve had good luck with fans of people who write similar books, who are easily found on Facebook. The members of book clubs are also very good at giving feedback – they’ve practiced explaining why they did or didn’t like a book. 

“Why” is the critical issue if you want to improve your work. “I loved it” or “I didn’t like it” don’t provide much guidance when you want to re-edit. To get the most out of your first readers, you need to ask specific questions from a reader’s (not writer’s) point of view. What questions? I’ll share my favorites next week.

Reading your Writing Right!

Last time I gave you some ideas on how to make your live reading more pleasing to your audience. Today I have a few more thoughts that may help.

Whatever you plan to read, have it neatly organized and annotated before you get on stage. No one wants to watch you searching through your book to find your reading. It’s unprofessional and looks like exactly what it is – you didn’t prepare.

Generally, I don’t read from my book. I copy the section I plan to read into a Word document. This way you can mark up the copy. Bold what you want to say louder. Cut out most of the dialog attributions – “Bob said” is often unnecessary when you’re reading out loud. Cut any line that slows down the action. Also, sometimes there’s a sentence (or even a paragraph) that’s important to the book but not really relevant to this section. You can cut those too. When you have the piece in exactly the shape you want it, print it out on regular paper. I usually print it in 14 point type, just to make things easier.

Now a few words about selecting your readings. First, make sure they represent your book. If it’s a dark, intense thriller, don’t read that one light hearted, humorous scene. It’s unfair to the people who might buy your book, and you don’t need reviews on Amazon about how your novel was not what the reader expected.

On the other hand, if you have a chance to read more than one excerpt from your novel, try to pick scenes that vary the tone. If one scene is heavy on the dialog, try to find one that’s all action.

All that being said, you also need to choose a reading that is appropriate for the audience. In some situations profanity, sexuality or strong violence may be unacceptable. In a library or book store, children may wander in at any time. Noir at the Bar, thanks to the location, has no such issues. And radio and TV have their own limitations. When in doubt ask the host where the lines are before you accidentally cross them. 

Also, be careful to avoid spoilers. Maybe you think the big finish or the vital clue is the best scene in the book. You might be right, but if you give too much away your listeners won’t feel there’s any reason to buy your book. You want to give them a feel for how good your writing is, but don’t give away the entire plot.

Finally, once you know you’ve picked the right section to read: practice, practice, practice. Read it out loud until you know how to modulate your voice, you know where the emphases go, where a little pause will help, where you should slow down for tension. Remember, it’s a performance and you want to keep your listeners entertained! That way, they’ll want to take that experience home with them.